The KDE release train continues to roll, delivering another beta release of KDE 4.3 to you today. The effort has shifted towards increasing stability and adding polish to the codebase so our users will find a well-working KDE 4.3.0 on their desktops when it is released in late July.

Over the last month, 2991 bugs have been closed and 3008 new ones opened. This indicates a huge turnover of bugs and by extension means: we care, yes we do. So help us with another round of quality improvements of KDE 4.3 and you will be able to reap the benefits yourself. Install the beta (though only for testing, we explicitly warn against production use), find bugs, report them on bugs.kde.org or better yet: fix them and send us patches!

Come help BugSquad as it kicks into high gear -- the next BugDay is June 20th, although people are always around to teach on irc.freenode.net in #kde-bugs.

Comments

I am runing it with Kubuntu packages and most of my issues I have reported with Beta 1 have been fixed. Only one crash so far. With KDE4.3 it seems really ready for use.
Things which still need improvement for 4.3.
- networkmanagement e.g. mobile "broadband" and vpn-support
- bugs for a small icon setting enviroment need to be fixed
- Klipper actions are partly brocken since Beta 1

Wishes for the future:
- Konqui seems to need some love.
- Activities are in an early stage, need improvement
- Dual monitor support with different desktops
- Mail tabs in Kmail and a mode for only showing folders with unread mail
- Akregator having a similar folder view then Kmail.

Hey, the new crash reporting tool is really wonderful!! I've just installed beta2 on my Kubuntu box and I have experienced a KMail crash (but I were already experiencing them with KDE 4.2 as well) and the new report tool pop out... it's almost perfect!! I have successfully reported the crash at the first try, I didn't have any doubt at any time about what I was doing... the UI is really well thought and an example for new (and old) KDE application about what a good UI is. Great job!

(the worst part being that this tool in the long run should be not used almost at all, cause we don't want crashes in KDE ;)

For the very obvious bugs, doing an extra installation based testing is possible. But from what I've experienced, most of the good bugs are only seen when you start using the app on a daily basis.
Like, I could have installed KDE 4.x in a chroot from day 1 and just periodically used it for "testing purpose". But that doesn't give much bugs. Especially for apps like Kmail/Konqueror, you need to be using them on a regular basis.
But then, that costs. I had to spend a lot many times with broken apps during the initial KDE 4.x releases.

How do you guys test ? Do the "real" testers always run trunk ?

And yes, I was wondering if Google Reader synchronization in Akregator was going to make into 4.3 ? I see the option for adding an account, but then no option to request for a sync. Is it done for 4.3 ?

Surely I cannot speak for all developers, but I for one switch to trunk snapshots (from openSUSE's unstable repos) around the release of the first Beta of a 4.x release (i.e. version 4.(x-1).80). By then, the obvious bugs are ironed out. My most important motivation is not testing (though that also is important), but the new features I'm seeing on Planet.

I usually switch one of my boxen to the beta when it comes out, and run nightlies thereafter, although I don't have as much time as I'd like to report bugs. I must say, I'm a sucker for pre-release software, and reading the Planet just feeds that hunger for the newest features, whatever the cost. :P That being said, I was impressed with the stability of 4.3.0b1 - there were some graphical issues, but it ran better overally than 4.2.3 did.

Just wonder why the Kubuntu packages for a beta are not debug enabled. Two crashes so far, one reproducable when you select Mandelbrot as a desktop wallpager background. No idea if it is the broken Kubuntu packages or KDE beta2: 3170 segmentation fault 11, reproducible. One minor theming bug I was unable to reproduce: drop-down menues of Dolphin in wonton colours and just the drop-down menues. When I put a plasma panel above the folderview desktop and select autohide, the panel is not visible otherwise it is on top of apps. Folderview content should ideally flow around the plasma widgets. etc. All this is very much minor polishing stuff. Lancelot is great design, should be a bit faster when launched. The black box welcome html screens of Konqueror and Kmail are still extremely ugly.

With beta2 of KDE 4.3 we find a clear vision of KDE developers which is ready for KDE enthusiasts and just needs a bit of polishing, speed optimization and elimination of the few remaining bugs. I am impressed how quickly all the common objections against KDE4 melt away and make way for the promising future on the base of that renovated architecture.